Imagine this — a fourteen book series spread over thousands of pages, a vast fictional universe with hundreds of characters, background stories, pretend history, with a good measure of magic and make-believe mythology thrown in. In addition to this, there’s also fan-fiction, fan art, discussion forums and wiki pages dedicated to each character. Voracious fantasy readers may have by now guessed that this is Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, a mammoth fantasy series that makes many a bookshelf groan under its weight.
What makes a reader pick up a series knowing that there’s definitely going to be a lot more than just one book? Reading a series requires an immense amount of commitment from the reader and an extremely skilled writer who manages to hold the audience’s attention until the last page of the last book.
Sandhya Ramesh, a 26-year-old web developer says the first book determines whether she would read the rest or not. “With any series, the very first thing that makes a reader want to stick to one is the ability of the first book/story in the series to grasp the reader’s interest; and secondly, a cliffhanger or an interesting few closing chapters at the end of each book. That said, there are still books that have neither an engrossing opening chapter, nor a cliffhanger, but have amazing content in between that makes you eagerly wait for the next book in the series.”
The reader also needs to commit him/herself completely to the series. This includes remembering characters, where they were left off, what the universe has, or doesn’t have and the ability to follow a complex storyline.
Balajee G.E., a 33-year-old brand manager in the social sector says, “It’s the idea of having a lot of good stuff to read. You know it is going to take a while to finish this and you know the series is good because someone has recommended it.”
Balajee, though, doesn’t read a series anymore because “Many times, it has failed for me, where I have given up halfway because it simply is not my taste. The characters may be good but I have found the writing difficult to follow. I have also given up on a comic series because the books were too expensive and it was too much of a burden on my pocket.”
Closure is one of the reasons a reader completes the series. Sometimes, the need to know what happens at the end can overwhelm one’s interest in the story itself. But for some, there is more than just closure that drives them to finish a series. “Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time and [Steven] Erickson’s Book of the Fallen were and are still unfinished. However, it is just pleasurable to go through the prose and the characters. It is easy to pick up the next book in the series, because you are sure, even if the characters are not going to be there, the style of writing is retained; the same structure is retained. It’s similar to picking up and reading all the books by the same author (in one shot) and finishing them all,” says Arul Sirpy, a product manager.
Many a time, the reader picks up the first book purely by chance. Pragya Bhagat, a program manager with Teach for India, chanced upon the first book in the Time Quintet series, A Wrinkle in Time at the local library. “It just so happened that the book had a sequel, and that the one after that had a sequel. There was no turning back. A tight story with recurring characters makes me want to read a book series.
I am attracted to the development of the characters and the human traits they exhibit, both positive and negative. The ‘greys’ in a character’s personality intrigue me.”
There’s also the element of community, of belonging to a fandom which in turn contributes fan-fiction and fan-art. “With the internet, it’s hard not to get more. There is fan fiction, fan art, theories, author interviews, and much more that keeps readers still involved in stories that have ended years ago,” says Sandhya.
Be it A Song of Ice and Fire , the Earthsea Series, or Gormenghast , it all depends not just on the reader’s interest but on great writing — writing that can keep you awake, as Pragya says, “Reading a series is a test of endurance, especially if you’re like me and disrupt your eating and sleeping cycle to finish a series.”
What better time than now to pick up the first book in that daunting trilogy you’ve been putting off?
